The Walking Dead Season 3: “Clear” Features a “Pivotal Moment” For Rick and Carl

The March 3 episode of The Walking Dead Season 3, “Clear,” features a scene that will make us — and Rick — see young Carl as more of an adult than ever.“It's a pivotal moment and [Rick] realizes he has to step up [as a father]. Parenting in the apocalypse,” sighs actor Andrew Lincoln, jokingly, during the show’s PaleyFest panel on March 1.

Executive producer Robert Kirkman adds that Carl’s storyline is going “in really exciting places. This season is just the beginning of his journey.”The episode after “Clear” will bring further confrontation between the prison group and the Governor. When asked if the Governor is pure evil, executive producer David Alpert diplomatically says, “All characters have good bad and evil in them. [Out of Rick and the Governor,] the Governor is doing the better job. The zombie apocalypse has unleashed the evil in him and allowed him to grow and prosper.”For his part, Rick isn’t exactly prospering as leader of the prison group. “Rick likes doing things his way. He's become this leader and maybe it's starting to poison him,” Andrew observes. “It's intoxicating and isolating.”One person bent on saving these two men from mutually assured destruction is Laurie Holden’s Andrea. “I think she thinks Woodbury is salvageable,” says Laurie about getting in between Rick and the Governor. “Her mind is on mediation. She sees two leaders who are losing themselves and losing their humanity. She's the woman in between and she's going to do the best she can.”Andrew describes the first 10 minutes of Sunday’s episode as “a perfect short film about [the survivors’] mental state,” which is pervaded by a lack of trust and fear of death.Andrew admits that the worst scene he’s ever shot for the show is the one in which Rick’s wife Lori dies during childbirth. “It's the one bad thing about this show,” he says. “We lose friends and actors. Losing Sarah [Wayne Callies] and IronE Singleton was brutal.”Laurie tells the audience they have “Death Dinners” for cast members who leave the show. “We honor the beautiful person and character that was on the show,” she says. “But we have to find a new venue. We get a cake, like it's so and so's birthday, and we all come out sobbing.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Addressing the possibility of romance blossoming between Daryl and Carol, actor Norman Reedus says, “I like these two damaged characters gravitating towards each other. I don't want to make the first move. I don't think Daryl has much game.”Norman may be modest about crossbow-wielding Daryl’s ability to talk feelings, but his tough-guy character is undoubtedly a post-apocalyptic hero. “Daryl's becoming the man he never would have become without this catastrophe,” Norman says.The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.